War on Peaceful Protest

See more photos from the protest {a href="http://www.facebook.com/StyleWeekly"}at Richmond-based Style Weekly's Facebook page{/a}.

You might think that the right wing in this country was getting the message that women will no longer stand for legal, verbal, and physical abuse and harassment, especially by elected officials. You would especially think that would be the case in Virginia where former Vice Presidential aspirant Governor Bob McDonnell, who is contemplating signing into law a forced ultrasound bill after doing women a “favor” and taking out the forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds initially required, has been widely pilloried. You would also think the right-wing would be cautious after a week in which the seemingly untouchable Rush Limbaugh has, as of this writing, lost seven corporate sponsors over his debasing remarks about Sandra Fluke.

But you would be wrong.

Because, you see, women in this country are so dangerous, their sense of entitlement as citizens so incredibly threatening to the peace of the republic that state police in riot gear were sent to remove peaceful protestors this past weekend. According to a news article in the Richmond independent news source Style Weekly:

Photos by Scott Elmquist, Style Weekly

“About a thousand women’s rights protestors descended on the state Capitol Saturday afternoon to protest anti-abortion legislation in the General Assembly, and then things got ugly,” reports Style Weekly’s Vernal Colman.

“About 20 State Police officers, many in swat gear with face shields and body armor, were called in to assist Capitol Police in controlling the crowd. Some of the State Police officers wore green camouflage and carried rifles and canisters of tear gas (no tear gas was used, however). After being warned to vacate the south steps of the Capitol, police officers arrested 31 people — 14 men and 17 women — on charges ranging from unlawful assembly to trespassing, according to Capitol Police.”

The rally ended a raucous two weeks in the statehouse, with anti-abortion legislation generating national headlines in a Republican-controlled General Assembly. While legislation granting unborn children “personhood” status was shelved until next year and a bill requiring invasive, transvaginal ultrasounds prior to abortions was watered down at the request of Gov. Bob McDonnell, women’s rights protestors descended onto Capitol Square nonetheless.

Photos by Scott Elmquist, Style Weekly

Colman continues: Organizers for the event, Speak Loudly With Silence, say that an estimated 1,000 people participated in the rally, which also involved members of the Occupy Richmond movement.”

Claire Tuite says that the arrests were not planned. When the protestors emerged on the Capitol, some made an “autonomous decision” to “occupy” the steps of the Capitol building.”

“This was a peaceful protest on taxpayer-funded property,” Tuite says. “We have every right to be here.”

Josh Kadrich, one of the organizers, says a small group broke off from the larger crowd of protestors, determined to make it to the steps. They blew by the cops standing on the steps leading towards the capitol. Others joined in. “Eventually, there were around 400 people sitting on the steps of the capitol in silence to protect women’s rights,” Kadrich says.

Then State Police, many officers in riot gear, showed up. The protestors were asked to leave and given a countdown as to when the police would begin making arrests. Some complied peacefully. Others locked arms and resisted.

Photos by Scott Elmquist, Style Weekly

Colman writes: “Molly Vice, press liaison for the group, says the arrests “shames lawmakers for passing regressive legislation that usurps the good judgment of women on their own health care for the state’s.

“It’s an outrage,” she says of the ultrasound bill. “We’re here … to tell truth to power that infringing on women’s health is not okay. Not this year or the next.”

Jodi L. Jacobson is a long-time leader in the health and development community and an advocate with extensive experience in public health, gender equity, human rights, environment and demographic issues. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of RH Reality Check. In September 2011, Ms. Jacobson was awarded the "Preserving Core Values in Science" Award by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.
Previously, Ms. Jacobson was the Director of Advocacy at American Jewish World Service, where she established a new department, leading the organization’s efforts to mobilize the American Jewish community toward ending the genocide in Darfur, fighting global AIDS, ensuring access to quality basic education worldwide, addressing the global food crisis, and promoting global debt relief and effective anti-poverty policies, among other issues.
From 1994 to 2007, Jodi served as founder and Executive Director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) (est. 1994), an organization that monitors and seeks to promote accountability of US international policy to women’s reproductive and sexual health and rights.

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Hannah

Women being in charge of reproduction and refusing to reproduce is very upsetting to some men. If women can’t be forced to replicate them, where will the fungible off-spring to order off to war come from? And it’s not just as troops that humans are fungible. Humans are a natural resource to be exploited, like all the goodies in Mother Nature’s cupboard. If the cupboard is bare, what happens to man’s dominion?
Whom can we dominated is an existential question for people whose identity is tied up in ruling someone else. I think it’s an infantile conundrum that some people never outgrow. I’m reminded of one grandson who, at the age of about four, announced “I have to tell my mother what to do.” He has now grown up into a clueless adult whose behavior has to be minutely directed now as then. At four he was trying to do to others what others were doing to him--a simple effort to mimic behavior. “Monkey see; monkey do.” It’s where a lot of people seem to be stuck. Presumably, it’s what the whole “role model” agenda is about. People won’t know how to behave unless someone shows them.
In an educational system that’s geared towards self-direction, those people’s needs won’t be addressed.

johnny

In that my prenatal inpout to our kids was moral support for their Mom and a blast of bodily secretion as someone once wrote (Robert Paul Smith, maybe?), I found it sort of hard to dictate what approach she took towards reproducing or not, beyond coming to agreement oveer when she chose to do so. I note with some irony, the loudest voices against women controlling their reproductive destiny come from so called religious persons whose sects do not allow women as leaders from their pulpits. The very loudest even requires celibacy on the part of its priests. We are to be guided in a very personal area by someone who literally doesn’t know what he’s talking about? When I turn gay, I’ll ask the RCs, their priesthood appears to have a it of experience in that area.

Robert Moore

Now, we have two really large problems. The first problem is a bunch of close-minded, retrograde, and almost entirely male politicians decided they have both the right and the expertise to dictate how a woman governs her own health. This has given rise to the second large problem.

South Carolina, indeed the Bible Belt in general, are turning into a collection of police states quite willing to violate the constitutionally clear right to assemble and to petition. Personally, I think it is time to figuratively tear down these political palaces of the entitled elitists. The political class in many states and particularly in the South feel an overriding sense of entitlement to control those whom they view as the ruled. They are rulers by what amounts to a religiously based divine right to rule the godless mass.

Occupy Wall Street was largely a symbolic and pointless movement. What it should turn into is a movement to Occupy Government. Flood the statehouses, governor’s mansions, courts with bodies, much like we saw in Wisconsin last winter. Make these sons-of-bitches see us and scare them into wetting themselves. These are authoritarian bastards. It is time for an American spring of real democracy.

http://hannah.smith-family.com/ Hannah

Spring arrives in two weeks, I think. Though the southern climes aren’t as sensitive to seasonal temperatures, I think there’s still a kind of hibernation from which people need to awaken with renewed vigor. Indeed, the public institutions, as well as public venues, need to be occupied by citizens. I suspect the initial occupiers had no idea of the extent to which “public space” had become a euphemism or holding category waiting for a private (special) interest to come along. Saving public resources is fine as long as nobody wants to exploit them. People parking themselves in a public park is scandalous.

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